


12 Days of Bellarke--I Mean, Christmas. Whatever. Same Thing.

by StrikerDouchecanoe



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2769908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerDouchecanoe/pseuds/StrikerDouchecanoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My stuff for the Bellarke Christmas challenge on tumblr! enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1: Secret Santa AU

 

“Nice,” Murphy commented, holding up a shirt that said _I HAVE MY OWN LAW… WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?_ across the front in large block letters. “Very funny. Jasper?”

Jasper shook his head, grinning.

“Monty? Miller?” Murphy persisted, earning headshakes from the other two boys crammed onto Raven’s tiny couch.

“Raven. Clarke. Tavia. Maya. Harper. Bellamy,” Murphy rattled off.

“You can’t guess everyone, that’s not fair,” Bellamy griped at the same time that Jasper muttered, “Ding ding, we have a winner!”

“Thanks, Bellamy,” Murphy said, ignoring the veritable storm of protesting noises from his friend and reaching for the next present in the pile. “This one’s to Bellamy,” he announced before tossing the present across the room. Bellamy snagged it out of the air and looked at the wrapping with interest.

“Based on the wrapping alone, my bet’s on you, Princess,” Bellamy said to Clarke, smirking. His smirk died (what Murphy could only assume was a painful death) when he ripped the paper away to reveal a small frame. Bellamy traced the wood with his fingertips almost reverently.

“Wow,” he breathed, ghosting the pad of his thumb over whatever lay beneath the glass.

“Dude, show us,” Miller said, leaning over to grab the frame out of Bellamy’s hands. The frame held a painting of Bellamy and Octavia together, presumably at O’s 21st birthday party in March. The painting itself couldn’t have been bigger than one of his own hands, Murphy noted, but the level of detail was incredible. Octavia was laughing, face scrunched up and cheeks flushed, while Bellamy’s likeness stared out of the frame with messy hair and a shit-eating grin.

“Well, we have no idea who that’s from,” Raven deadpanned, breaking the silence. “Bellamy, pick your face up off the floor.”

Bellamy managed to shoot a glare at Raven before he snatched the painting back from Miller. It seemed to take him a moment to remember that he was supposed to pull out the next present, and Murphy decided to help by clearing his throat. Loudly.

“Uh, last one...is for…Clarke,” he said, pushing it across the table. “Here.”

“She broke Bellamy,” Harper muttered, earning a snort from Monty and an elbow in the side from Clarke.

Clarke unfolded the ends of the paper and carefully untied the ribbon. Inside was a rolled-up piece of paper.

“To Clarke, from Murphy,” she read out loud. “Murph, did you miss the secret part of secret santa?”

“Read the rest,” Murphy challenged, leaning back in his chair. Clarke rolled her eyes.

“One hug from--” Clarke stopped abruptly, flushing from the roots of her blonde hair down to the collar of her sweater. “ _Murphy!”_

“One hug from _who?”_ Raven asked. “And Murph, how do you give someone a hug from someone else?”

“It’s easy, if they’re in on it,” Murphy snarked. Clarke’s blush deepened and she muttered something about needing a lot more eggnog before standing up and walking out the front door.

“Does she know the eggnog isn’t out there?” Miller asked amid the laughter in the room.

Bellamy, to everyone’s surprise (except Murphy’s) rose from his chair and walked out the front door with a resigned sigh, followed by whistles and whoops from the living room. Raven’s eyebrows shot up and she opened her mouth (most likely to ask Murphy what the fuck was going on), but Harper hissed out a loud, “Shhhhhhh!” and gestured toward the front door.

“You gonna collect, Princess?” Bellamy’s voice came muffled from the front steps.

“Yeah, alright,” Murphy heard Clarke mumble. “Not sure if I should shake Murphy’s hand or kick his ass.”

Bellamy laughed, a low, warm sound that found its way into the living room. And then, for what seemed like hours, it was quiet.

“How long are they gonna hug?” Jasper whispered incredulously.

Murphy motioned for everyone to follow him into the kitchen, the seven of them crowding to look out the window behind the sink.

Bellamy and Clarke were kissing under the porch light, his hands tangled in her hair and her arms around his waist.

Jasper banged on the kitchen window and Monty let out a loud whoop.

Bellamy, in response, pulled Clarke flush against him with one hand and flipped his friends off with the other, never breaking his mouth away from Clarke’s.

“Not only do I have my own law,” Murphy stated smugly, “But I’m responsible for _that_. What did you guys do today?”

“And hey, Jasper, Miller, and Octavia? Pay up,” he added as an afterthought.

 

 


	2. Day 2: Christmas on the Ark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where Clarke isn't put in solitary and she never told Wells anything. This is super angsty. Sorry. Tomorrow's will be better. Also, sorry I'm late. The PacRim AU was my priority today.

 

Time was weird in space.

Not in the sense that it ran differently, but the Ark completed so many orbits in twenty-four hours that Clarke didn’t know what it was like to have a sense of a day. Or a night. Or, for that matter, a year. The clocks on the Ark told them what time it was. Relatively. They couldn’t exactly go off Greenwich Mean Time anymore, and Clarke didn’t doubt the clocks were a little off after ninety-seven years.

Either way, apparently it was Christmas.

The other inmates were excited--apparently a couple of guys had found a way to make contraband alcohol. Clarke wondered if she should report them, and then realized that it didn’t make any difference. They were in prison anyway, living out their last days until they turned eighteen. What difference did a little alcohol make?

Clarke felt the opposite of festive. The space where her father was supposed to be ached every time she tried to take a breath, and she woke up screaming more often than she didn’t.

Nightmares don’t make friends, she quickly learned.

People whispered. They whispered about how her mom had gotten her dad executed, about how she screamed in her sleep, about how she was the only one of them who didn’t have visitation privileges. They whispered about how she’d get flashbacks and sit shaking on her cot for hours. They never stopped whispering, and Clarke never stopped screaming in her sleep.

She couldn’t even muster the energy to be grouchy about Christmas. The best she could manage was brittle, fragile indifference. If indifference even counted as an emotion, which Clarke was fairly sure it didn’t.

 

Christmas Eve found her sitting alone in a corner of the mess hall. The other inhabitants of the Skybox had trickled out one by one after dinner, no doubt having found some hidey-hole in which to get hammered off shitty contraband liquor.

Clarke was on the floor in a corner, knees drawn up to her chest, folding in on herself in hopes that long limbs would fill the aching void. They didn’t.

She jumped at hearing the mess hall door open, but it wasn’t one of the hundred prisoners. A janitor with a shock of curly black hair gave her an apologetic look.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine,” Clarke said tonelessly. “I’ll go.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping closer. Clarke nodded, peeled herself off the white floor, and made for the exit.

“I’m Bellamy,” he called after her.

“Merry fucking Christmas, Bellamy,” she muttered.

“Merry fucking Christmas to you too,” he said, mirth in his voice. Damn. She thought she’d been quieter.

Clarke turned around and took measured steps back towards Bellamy. “Clarke,” she said.

“Merry fucking Christmas, Clarke,” Bellamy said. “You wanna talk about it?”

Clarke shook her head.

“I don’t have anyone either, you know,” he said, softer now. “My sister’s in solitary. Mom got floated a year ago.”

“You’re Bellamy Blake,” Clarke said, eyebrows going up. He nodded, looking more resigned than anything.

“Yep,” he said. “That would be me. What’re you in for?”

Clarke shook her head, fighting back tears that suddenly threatened to spring up. Bellamy nodded, seeming to understand. He sat down in the corner where Clarke had been, and patted the space next to him.

“Clarke Griffin?” he asked as she sat down.

“That would be me,” she said.

 

The Ark carried on its loops around the abandoned planet, and the abandoned planet carried on around a small yellow star, and with or without an accurate clock system, two lonely people sat shoulder to shoulder on a prison floor and talked.

When the hundred were sent to the ground mere weeks later, Clarke would find herself staring into familiar brown eyes under the same black hair--slicked back now, but still Bellamy. When his little sister stepped off the drop ship, Clarke would lace her fingers with his and whisper, “And a happy damn New Year.”


	3. Day 3: Mistletoe Mishap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College AU! Sorry, I'm setting almost none of these in canon verse. I love Modern AU Bellarke way too much. Also, there's a nod to my ongoing project, The War Patrols of Brawler Aurora. It's not a subtle nod, either.

Bellamy was stoically _not_ looking up. He’d noticed the plastic mistletoe taped to the ceiling maybe fifteen minutes ago, but he was hoping Clarke hadn’t. Not because he didn’t want to kiss her, but because he wasn’t sure if he could do rejection from Clarke Griffin.

They’d started out as enemies--if you could even say college kids had enemies, per se. Bellamy thought it was more like _people who religiously disliked one another._ But after Clarke’s home life had fallen apart, she’d spent more and more time with him and Octavia, and they’d grown to be close--if not _best_ \--friends.

It seemed like they were the only two people left on campus over Christmas. Well, except for O, but she was out and about with Lincoln, which left Clarke and Bellamy watching Pacific Rim for what must have been the hundredth time, curled up on the couch in his dorm room. It was Clarke’s favorite movie, suggested to her last year by Murphy, of all people. She’d roped Bellamy into watching it, and now when they had nothing else to do, they’d have what Clarke called _movie nights_ , Bellamy called _hanging out_ , and the rest of their friends called _Jaeger dates_.

“D’you think we’re drift compatible?” Clarke asked from where she was nestled against Bellamy’s chest, snapping him out of his concentration on the screen. When he didn’t answer right away, he felt her move as if to look up at him.

 _Don’t look up don’t look up don’t look up,_ Bellamy thought, hoping none of his tension managed to bleed into his tone when he said, “If we aren’t, who is, Princess?”

Clarke nodded and made a humming noise in agreement. It was silent for another minute as they watched the destruction taking place on screen before Clarke said, “Do you think Mako and Raleigh get together?”

“Haven’t we had the Mako and Raleigh conversation every time we’ve watched this?” Bellamy asked.

“Yeah,” she conceded. “But your answer changes every time.”

Bellamy laughed and picked up a strand of her hair, twirling it around his finger. “I think it’s possible,” he said.

“You don’t think it’s definite? I mean, he looks at her like she put the stars in the sky.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t look at him the same,” Bellamy argued, hyperaware of the fact that he wasn’t talking about Mako Mori anymore.

“How would Raleigh know that? It’s not like he’s looking when she does it,” Clarke retorted, and suddenly Bellamy wasn’t so sure she was talking about Pacific Rim either.

“You’d think they’d both see it in the Drift,” he finally managed, still playing with Clarke’s hair, impressed with how casual he sounded.

“What I wouldn’t give for a neural bridge, then,” Clarke muttered, almost to herself, and _oh holy shit,_ did that mean what Bellamy half hoped and half feared it did?

“Or you could ask,” he found himself saying.

Clarke did look up at him then, just turning her head enough to look straight into his eyes, and Bellamy tried his best not to register how close she was.

“So?” she asked.

And _fuck it_ , she was outright asking him how he felt, and she was sitting right there, and there was a shitty plastic piece of mistletoe duct taped to the dorm ceiling right above their heads, and Bellamy kissed her. It was slow and more tentative than he’d ever been in his life, and he’d barely brushed his mouth against hers before he pulled back, eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to see her face.

What he didn’t expect was for Clarke to chase his lips when he pulled away, her fingers tangling in his hair and their noses brushing. Bellamy closed the distance the rest of the way, pulling her into his lap and tracing the curve of her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. He barely held back a gasp when she opened her mouth and slid her tongue against his, but when he nipped at her bottom lip and she made a little keening noise in the back of her throat, Bellamy couldn’t help the absolutely wrecked moan that escaped him. He felt Clarke grin, and she pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes all but fucking sparkling, her cheeks flushed and her ponytail ruined, movie completely forgotten in the background.

“Who needs a neural bridge after all, huh?” she teased, fingers carding through his hair and  _Jesus fucking Christ_ , that felt good.

“Before I forget to tell you,” he murmured, leaning forward to leave a line of kisses under her jaw, “and I _will_ forget to tell you, look up.”

Bellamy took advantage of the fact that Clarke’s head was tipped back to kiss a sloppy line up her throat--and when she saw the mistletoe, she let out a breathy laugh before bringing her mouth right back to his.

“Can we have the Mako and Raleigh discussion more often?” he whispered against her smile.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “Let’s just make Pacific Rim and mistletoe a thing.”

It was the best Christmas Bellamy could remember. 


	4. Day 4: Learning to Skate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know anything about skating. And I don't even really care for it that much (though don't get me wrong, nathenmiller's Hocker Player!Bellamy AU is totally the stuff). So I wrote about skiing instead. And I do know stuff about skiing (which is what you get for growing up in a Colorado resort town and having two instructors for parents). Thanks for the incredible amount of support you guys have shown, it makes the stress of writing 100000% worth it. :)

Clarke muffled a laugh as Bellamy, looking grim and determined, overbalanced on his rental skis _again_ and came to an abrupt halt, flat on his ass.

To be fair, it wasn’t his fault he was dating a ski racer, Clarke thought. But it never failed to amuse her that her _hockey player boyfriend_ couldn’t even stand on a pair of skis.

“Bellamy, it’s not that different from skates,” she called, sidestepping up the hill towards where he was sprawled.

“Yeah, Princess, but I don’t skate _downhill,_ ” Bellamy gritted out through his teeth. “The balance is completely fucked up.”

Clarke sighed. “Here, get your skis parallel. No, across the hill. There you go. Now stand up.”

Bellamy complied, grumbling as Clarke helped him to his feet.

“Okay,” she began. “Just like skating. You have to keep your knees bent to skate, right?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy said. “And you’ve gotta stay forward over your skates or you’ll eat it.”

“Same on skis,” Clarke instructed. “And I know it’s counterintuitive, but you have to lean down the hill, otherwise you’ll keep ending up behind your skis.”

“Which is when I end up on my ass, right?” Bellamy clarified, eyebrows crawling up into his hat.

Clarke nodded. “Okay, so the next thing is how to turn,” she continued, “because I’m pretty sure you don’t want to learn the edgie-wedgie method.”

Bellamy snorted, earning him an eye-roll from Clarke. “C’mon, Princess, tell me that doesn’t sound like some weird kinky shit.”

“So. Turning,” Clarke said, shaking her head. Because alright, maybe it did, but they were _still_ at the top of a green run and they’d been on the mountain for three hours now.

“Turning,” Bellamy echoed.

“Watch me,” Clarke called over her shoulder, angling her skis down the hill. “When you want to turn, you shift your weight onto your downhill foot. And then you just bend your knees and plant your pole, and the rest of the turn happens naturally. See?” she called back up to Bellamy, who was watching her with a decidedly fuckstruck look on his face.

“Did you pay attention to what I was saying, or was that all you staring at my ass?” Clarke teased. “I’m not even in my race gear, Bellamy, what’s there to see?”

“I wasn’t staring at your ass,” Bellamy called down indignantly. “Just--you look really graceful,” he managed. “Like you’re really in your element. Whatever. It’s--yeah.”

Clarke didn’t even try to stifle the grin that spread over her frozen face. “Will you get down here?” she called to him.

And then Bellamy pointed his skis down the hill, shifted his weight, and executed a pretty nice--if wobbly--turn. Clarke saw his face light up as his skis came around, and then he was stopped right next to her, grinning just as widely as she was.

“That’s how I feel when I watch you play hockey,” she said simply. “You just sort of _belong_ on the ice.”

Bellamy leaned down and kissed her, despite the fact that they were standing in the middle of a run, the angle was awkward, and their mouths were both chapped and cold from the wind. Clarke felt him smile--a little, soft smile right against her lips, nothing anyone could have seen skiing by them--and she understood what he meant (even though they hadn’t said it yet).

“So maybe I was staring at your ass,” he admitted when they broke apart.

“If you can catch up to me, you can do more than stare,” Clarke said, grinning at the surprise on her boyfriend’s face as she turned away down the hill.

As it turned out, Bellamy was a very fast learner. 


	5. Day 5: First Snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set ten weeks after 2x08. It's sad and angsty, but it's also sort of healing. Also, it's really frickin' long. Sorry I'm behind on these, but it was almost impossible to write there for a couple days. 
> 
> This has just about every ship in the book--past Flarke, Murphy/Finn, some undertones of Murphamy if you squint, some hella Princess Mechanic, past Finn/Raven, some Murphy/Raven--but it does end with Bellarke. A lot of Bellarke. I'm sorry, it's probably slightly OOC, but I kinda needed to write this for catharsis purposes.

Finn had been gone ten weeks when it started snowing. Clarke had been going through the motions, leading the Arkers alongside her mother, helping in the med bay, conferring with Lexa. The days passed in numb, gray blurs. The nights were excruciating.

It had been ten weeks since, “Thanks, princess,” and the snow was drifting from the sky in large, cold flakes, blanketing the ground and muffling the sounds from the forest around camp. Ten weeks to the day, and Clarke was sitting by herself, high up on the wreckage of Alpha Station. It was the first snowfall any of them had ever seen, but she couldn’t muster up excitement--or even tears. The only feeling she had left was the dull ache of grief and emptiness that had hollowed out a space behind her sternum after Finn’s death and never left.

She knew her people were worried for her, maybe Bellamy most of all, but she no longer had the capacity to talk outside of her duties. It just… didn’t happen.

For Clarke, talking was too hard. Too superficial, even, to talk about herself after what she’d done. She’d ended a life, ripped a friend away from Murphy and Bellamy, killed the only family Raven had left. In her mind, comfort and friendship were things she no longer deserved.

“Hey,” a voice said from behind her. Clarke spun around to see Murphy, of all people, standing behind her with two cups. “Can I sit down?” he asked.

She managed a nod, looking out over the snow-covered land between them and Mount Weather. Murphy offered her one of the cups, and she took it silently.

“What are you doing up here?” she managed in a hoarse, broken voice after several long drinks of what turned out to be something very hot and very alcoholic.

“Making the rounds,” Murphy said, sipping his own drink. “I’m the only one who can stand to talk to everyone, I guess. Already been to Bellamy and Raven.”

“Even though Raven was gonna turn you in?” Clarke asked.

“Like none of us would’ve done the same thing in her shoes?” Murphy countered. “Tell me you wouldn’t turn me over in exchange for Bellamy.”

“There was a time when I would’ve,” she admitted. “But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“You already can’t live with yourself,” Murphy said, scooting closer and putting one arm up on the metal behind Clarke’s back--not quite hugging her, but close. “Clarke, the only person left on this earth who hasn’t forgiven you is you.”

She managed to look at him then, and for the first time in ten weeks she felt tears stinging behind her eyes. Somehow, Murphy knew what the look meant, and Clarke was grateful she didn’t have to explain further as he started talking.

“Hey, hey,” he said, abandoning his drink and tugging her closer to his side. “Finn died happy and at peace. You know that, right? All he wanted was for you to be safe. You’re safe.”

“I _killed_ him,” Clarke whispered, the tears falling silently down her frozen face.

“I know you don’t want to hear what I’m about to say,” Murphy cautioned, “but Clarke, he couldn’t have lived with himself if Lexa had spared him. I think we both know that.” In an uncharacteristic gesture of tenderness, Murphy reached over and swiped the tears from her face with the pad of his thumb.

“He got a quick, relatively painless death,” Murphy continued, rubbing her back through her jacket. “He got to take his last breath with you holding on to him. He died knowing you loved him. Trust me, he knew why you were there, and he forgave you long before it ever happened.”

A sob caught in Clarke’s throat, and she turned her head into Murphy’s shoulder. He cradled the back of her head in his hand, holding onto her for what felt like years until she could breathe again.

“Sorry about your jacket,” she muttered when she finally pulled away, swiping her nose on her jacket sleeve.

       “Clarke, that’s like the oldest romance movie line there is,” he said with a snort.

       “Ew,” Clarke retaliated halfheartedly, still leaning into her friend’s side. When Murphy had become a friend, she wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for his presence.

       The companionable silence stretched out between them, slipping from seconds into minutes under the gray blanket of the sky. Murphy retrieved his drink and sipped at it, still absently rubbing Clarke’s shoulder with his thumb.

       “Did you love him?” Clarke asked, not sure where the question had come from. “Finn, I mean.”

       “I don’t know,” Murphy said thoughtfully. “I never really thought of it that way, but—when Raven wanted to turn me over, I was thinking I’d do it. To save him. So he could have a chance to fix things. So yeah, I guess I did. I do.”

       “I’m sorry you lost that,” Clarke whispered, tears stinging her eyes again.

       “I still talk to him,” Murphy said. “Dreams. Wherever he is, he seems to have found the next shore in love or whatever.”

       “I don’t dream,” Clarke said softly. “I haven’t since.”

       “Like I told you,” Murphy said, “the only person on this earth who hasn’t forgiven you is you.”

       Clarke nodded absently—not sure if she could quite forgive, but thinking that maybe this was a start, with Murphy sitting next to her and a blanket of snow covering their world.

       “How’s Bellamy?” she finally asked, picking at a stray thread on her pants.

       “As good as can be expected,” Murphy told her. “You really should talk to him, Clarke. He misses you.”

       “We talk in council meetings,” Clarke said immediately. “And when the hundred have meetings.”

       “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

       Clarke sighed. “Look, Murph, I just... It’s too hard to talk. To anyone, but especially Bellamy.”

       “Why especially Bellamy?” Murphy asked. “He cares about you almost as much as he cares about Octavia—which is saying a lot, by the way.”

       “Exactly,” Clarke said. “Besides, I already took Finn away from Raven, you know? Whatever she and Bellamy have, I can’t ruin that for her too.”

       “What she and Bellamy have,” Murphy drawled, “is long talks about how worried they are about you, which usually end with me bringing Bellamy a really stiff drink and Raven staying with him so he can sleep. He _cares,_ Clarke. A lot.”

       Clarke shook her head at the image of Bellamy drinking himself to sleep, and the tears she hadn’t been able to summon for ten weeks threatened to spill over _yet again._ It seemed she was always hurting someone.

       “Does he care like—like you care about Finn?” she made herself ask.

       “That,” Murphy said, “isn’t my place to say. You gotta ask Bellamy.”

       “I miss him too,” Clarke whispered. “And Raven.”

       “So talk to them,” Murphy urged. “It’ll hurt, but you need to do it. You do deserve friendship, you know.”

       Clarke suddenly couldn’t sit still any longer, the life returning to her numbed limbs in a rush as she remembered what it used to be like with Raven and Bellamy—remembered the hugs and the laughter and the wordless communication, and suddenly she couldn’t be away any longer.

“Thanks, Murph,” she said, kissing him on the cheek before standing up to begin her descent to the ground. A smile broke across Murphy’s face.

“No problem, Princess,” he said. Realization crept across his features as soon as the words were out of his mouth, followed quickly by horror. “Shit, Clarke, I’m sorry,” Murphy blurted out, scrambling to his feet.

“No, it’s… it’s actually okay,” Clarke said, feeling a faint smile on her face. “It reminds me of him, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. I don’t think he’d mind.”

 

She found Raven first, making snow angels just outside the gate--with Major Byrne, of all people. When Raven saw Clarke, she jumped up from the imprint she’d made in the snow and tackled Clarke into a hug.

“I missed you,” she said into Clarke’s jacket.

“I missed you too,” Clarke managed, the pain resurfacing as she tightened her arms around Raven.

“What convinced you?” Raven asked, pulling back to look at her friend.

“Murphy, actually,” Clarke admitted sheepishly. “We just spent the last hour or so talking.”

“Good old Murph,” Raven said, a flash of guilt crossing her face.

“He’s forgiven you, you know,” Clarke said. “Forgiving ourselves is--well, it’s hard.”

“Amen to that,” Raven agreed. “Have you talked to Bellamy yet?”

“No,” Clarke said, suddenly shifting her focus to the dirt under one of her fingernails. “I didn’t know if you and--if there was something--I didn’t want to get in the way,” she finished lamely.

Raven laughed then, a sound Clarke had thought she’d never hear again, ringing out clear through camp and the forest surrounding. “Bellamy’s got eyes for one person,” she managed between giggles. “And it’s not me.”

“What do you mean?” Clarke cut in, brows furrowing. “Murphy said something similar, but then he wouldn’t talk about it.”

“You, Princess,” Raven said, “are going to have to talk to your knight yourself.”

“My _what?”_ Clarke asked incredulously.

“Just go talk to him,” Raven said, giving the blonde a shove back towards the gate.

 

Clarke found Bellamy in his tent, methodically sharpening his knife. “Knock, knock,” she said softly, letting herself in through the tent flap.

“It’s not meeting day,” Bellamy ground out, still staring at his knife.

“I know,” Clarke said, taking a step forward. “I miss you, Bellamy. A lot. And I’m sorry that I’ve been so--” she broke off, fighting the overwhelming lump in her throat and the sadness that was crashing around her shoulders once again.

Bellamy was on his feet and stepping forward to meet her almost before she finished talking--and then she was engulfed in warm, strong arms, his face buried in her hair and hers pressed into his chest.

“I missed you too,” he murmured into her hair, and Clarke was fairly sure she didn’t imagine his voice breaking, so she squeezed him tighter.

“Murphy and Raven said some interesting stuff,” she began when he finally loosened his grip enough to look at her, arms still around her waist.

“Like what?” Bellamy asked, his eyes lighter and more carefree than Clarke had seen them in a long time.

“Well, Raven said something about only having eyes for one person, and Murphy made fun of me for thinking there was something between you and Raven before he clammed up and told me it wasn’t his place to elaborate, and--”

“Oh,” Bellamy said, flushing from his dark curls down to the collar of his jacket. “Um.”

Clarke raised her eyebrows, heart suddenly hammering, wondering if she’d been wrong to mention it.

“It’s kind of complicated,” Bellamy allowed. “It’s--it might be too soon to explain it, actually.”

“It’s been over two months,” Clarke said. “You can tell me.”

“I love you,” Bellamy said bluntly. “Really, I have probably since the incident with the Jobi nuts, and I know you love Spacewalker and I don’t expect anything to happen, but… now you know, I guess,” he finished, resolutely not meeting her eyes.

“We all loved Finn in our own ways,” Clarke pointed out. “And that won’t stop just because he’s gone. But you make my life better, Bellamy. I can breathe when I’m around you. We talk without ever actually speaking. I know you have my back, no matter what I do. And if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

“Wait,” Bellamy croaked. “Are you saying you--?”

“Yeah,” Clarke whispered. “I think I have for a long time, but talking to Murphy brought it out.” She stretched up on her toes, wrapping her arms around Bellamy’s neck and praying he’d meet her halfway.

He did, lips pressing against hers in a gentle, chaste kiss, and Clarke felt the hole where her lungs used to be beginning to heal.

  
Outside, the snowfall picked up, flurrying around camp with a contagious enthusiasm that many of the Arkers recognized. And high up on the ruins of Alpha Station, John Murphy raised his cup to the sky and smiled as snowflakes settled in his hair and ghosted over his cheeks. “Hi, Finn,” he whispered.


End file.
